May 12, 2036
Long Beach, CA
Mark Simpson
As Mark Simpson stood in front of the dugout following his walk off three run home run, we doubt he realized that he had just set an obscure Frick League record. More likely? He was thinking about how quickly he could get back to the locker room, and if he had time for a shower before the team departed for their 6 hour flight to Honolulu.
Known to the star first baseman or not, he set the Frick League regular season extra innings game record for RBI, with 8. Now, an 8 RBI game is certainly impressive, and not something we see often at all. However, the non-extra innings version of the single game RBI record is 10, done once in the Frick and twice in the Johnson (interestingly two of the three have been Las Vegas Hustlers). Nine RBI in a single game has been accomplished 5 times before just in the Frick. It just so happens that Simpson was the first person to do it in a Frick League game that happened to go extra innings.
Those statheads sure like to make a big deal out of RBI, don't they?
Given the caveats to this "record" you might say that the most impressive thing about this Surfers victory was not Simpson's performance, but rather the performace of rookie reliever Imad bin Ibrahim. Coincidentally, the 25 year old righty was acquired in the same trade as Simpson back in 2029. On the team primarily because he was out of options, he's been serving as a righty specialist, given his ability to keep the ball down in the zone against same handed hitters.
Imad bin Ibrahim
Tonight though, he was needed for more than his usual inning or less. In fact, he threw 60 pitches over 4 innings. They were far from perfect, in fact he allowed three runs in the top of the 12th, his third inning of work. But the Surfers fought back to tie the game in the bottom half, and he shut the Stars down in the top of the 13th, allowing just a walk.
Simpson's 3-run bomb was the ultimate topper for a crazy game that saw a total of 21 runs score, and featured not just one, but two blown saves by the Surfers 'pen.
